In the Wake

I've long been processing something I read/rumored about regeneration. A post on Snopes.com launched a great discussion of this, at length (snippets far below, food for thought). A good, thought-provoking take on Chopra's thinking spawned a good deal of thinking on my part, over the years.

Here's the skinny: since our cells regenerate, we are in some senses "new people" every few years as those old cells that make us up die and new ones take on their roles. That's just animal science. Of course, we are made up of more than the parts of our wholeness, but in the wake of my Uncle's departure, I find it somewhat comforting.

As I try to shake off the slime of mortuary science that jades my every funeral experience, I grapple here for something more positive.

What are we, really, but interactions, thoughts and memories we contain and make? "The Mark of a Man," yesterday's preacher's 'words of wisdom' have some bearing on this discussion. This suggests, of course, that we need to be engaged. We need to be out there making memories for ourselves and others, perhaps to even exist? I suppose one could be whole and not be anything to anyone but themselves. They would then contain a great number of memories. However, when they die, they are gone, by that reasoning. Only s/he who also makes memories for others lives after themselves among others.

Likewise, we are an assembly of convenient atoms. Yes, atomically we are reconfiguring all the time and composed of everyone and everything, but more than likely, if I don't travel much/far, then I am a rather homogeneous being compared to a world traveler. Take it down to something more easy to grasp: when you drive by a feedlot and smell that effluvia, you are literally engaged with particles of poo, these connecting with sensory receptors in your nose. However, if I never smell curry, or the sweat of an old woman sitting alongside the Nile, the flower of the rain forest, etc...then I am less a person than I could be, were I travelling far and wide.

There, I feel both better and worse now.



Snips from Snopes....
A lot of this talk goes back to an ancient logical conundrum that bedevils the concept of "identity." Imagine you have a wooden ship, the traditional paradox goes, and as you make your travels planks and ropes and such slowly wear out. As each small component becomes unfit it is replaced. Eventually, no original material remains, yet the ship has been in continuous use. Is it still the same ship?And to make things even more complicated, imagine someone has been following behind and collecting all the old pieces, eventually hammering them into a (supposedly terrible-looking) complete vessel. Is this then the original ship?

Hai!! Deepak Chopra has to be the biggest claptrap that has ever happenned to eastern religions. His theories are to Hinduism and Buddhism what ID is to Christianity. He tries to provide a scientific basis to things that are meant to be read as metaphors. He takes the spirituality, and wraps it in scientific sounding jargon interlaced with "facts" to make it sound authorativeIn this case, the "fact" is used to "prove" the Buddhist belief that the self is an illusion (which is derived from the Hindu belief that the world is an illusion). This concept is used to rationalize that attachment to self (or wordly objects) leads to sufferring, and true happiness/salvation/nirvana comes when you let go of attachment to things. How often your body regenerates itself, or whether parts of it does/does not regenerate is not important. The science behind it is not important. What is more important is the realization that your body isn't "you". Even if you could prove to me that my my neurons/teeth/that spot behind my ear that I never wash is never fully replaced, you haven't negated any of the Hindu/Buddhist philosophy.